This is the second season for wnst.net and toyotaliveweb.com fantasy NASCAR, and likewise it’s my second season of following the sport and playing the game. If you haven’t signed up yet, I challenge you to do it, the link is right there on the right side of the front page. I challenge you to go there and sign up, take 5 minutes of your life and pick 10 racers. After that, watch the race on Sunday; it will be a nice distraction from all of the Ray Lewis debate. At least watch the last 50 laps, tune in sometime around 7:30 or so, if you won’t commit to the whole race. I guarantee, that once you have a reason to root for someone, you’ll enjoy the race. You may not enjoy it as much as football, baseball or basketball, or any other number of sports for that matter, but it is enjoyable.

As for the game, there are $2500 worth of cash prizes on the line, I know you’ll be interested in that. The winner will walk away with $1250, second place will get $750, and the third place winner will receive $500 in cash courtesy of toyotaliveweb.com and wnst.net.

Even better still, the winners will be the 3 highest single week scores, so you don’t have to be married to your team. Heck, you don’t even really have to know what you’re doing. And if you missed out on the first two races of the season, you’re still no further out of the money than our 2 current leaders.

Speaking of the leaders, congratulations to Broham’s for racking up 1175 pts. in last week’s race and positioning himself in line for the money. There’s a lot of racing left, but 1175 pts. will be tough to beat. So go get signed up and have at it. You could even go today and pick a lineup and leave it alone for the rest of the season if you’d like. You may be pleasantly surprised at the end of the season to find out you’ve won cash, substantial cash.

As for my strategy, I’m still working on one. Last season, I let my wife pick my lineup every week. She was really scientific about it too, printing the results from the last 5 years at each track, along with the points standings and starting positions. And she did pretty well, but this year she told me to get my own team.

So the first week, I went about picking a lineup as quickly as I could, hoping to get lucky and beat the lineup that she was working so hard to put together. When the race was over, I had 100 pts. She didn’t do much better, but she did do better.

The following week, I was half tempted to leave my lineup the same, the other half of me wanted to change it up though. So I did both. As an employee of the station, I’m sure I can’t win anyway, so disqualifying myself by submitting multiple entries wasn’t a big deal.

I decided to leave my week 1 lineup, “Thyrl’s Thugs”, the same for the remainder of the season. They’re now the static lineup, or control group. If I had known I’d be keeping this lineup intact for the whole season on the day that I picked it, I probably would have taken more care, but it only takes one week to win the big prize.

I created a second lineup too, “Thyrl’s Other Thugs”, which I’ll change every week. I decided that I’d make this one simple to manage too. Using the drivers’ stats pages on NASCAR.com, I simply pick the drivers based on their average finishes at that particular track. Obviously, this strategy will never allow me to pick rookies, but no system is perfect, we’ll work it as we go along, and make changes as necessary.

Last week, both lineups came in with 600 pts. Hopefully we’ll be better this week. Here are my lineups for Sunday’s race.

Thyrl’s Thugs

static lineup

1. Dale Earnhardt Jr.

2. Kyle Busch

3. Jimmie Johnson

4. Mark Martin

5. Tony Stewart

6. Kasey Kahne

7. Jeff Gordon

8. Greg Biffle

9. Joey Logano

10. Carl Edwards

Thyrl’s Other Thugs

dynamic lineup (avg. finish at Las Vegas in parentheses)

1. Denny Hamlin – (7.3)

2. Matt Kenseth – (9.0)

3. Jimmie Johnson – (9.3)

4. Jeff Burton – (10.5)

5. Mark Martin – (11.1)

6. Carl Edwards – (11.8)

7. Kyle Busch – (13.2)

8. Kevin Harvick – (14.2)

9. Tony Stewart – (14.4)

10. Greg Biffle – (14.6)

Now go get signed up and put in your lineup too. If you need more incentive than cash, the guy in second place right now named his team “da stillers”. You can’t let a Steelers fan walk away with the loot. Haven’t they won enough already?